The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Tuesday 2 June 2009

Homophone corner: The Tories in conference in Perth this weekend had George Osborne to ring Scottish withers.

They were weeping as they collected their runners-up medals, strapping men wiping red eyes on their red-and-white shirts. Barcelona, on the night of the Copa del Rey, had been magical as usual, Athletic Bilbao didn't stand a chance once. But this was an especially hard defeat, met with pure grief.

For Bilbao continue to do something that the rest of Europe – nay, the rest of the sporting world – has long since abandoned. Through 80 years in La Liga, through eight league championships and 12 cup triumphs, they've basically only recruited from the Basque country. They are the team of a nation in waiting, a repository of faith beyond chequebook and slightly manufactured patriotism.

Barca can play the Catalan card up front, but they buy Argentine, French and Cameroon strikers as required. The Basques, in their history, language and rigorous tradition, are different: they are the most devout apostles left of that small but often bloody collection of European nations within greater nations striving to be free. And, 10 years into a semi-free Scotland and semi-demi-free Wales, it's right to pause and take stock. Where have these national longings, sometimes accompanied by seething violence, got the would-be states in waiting? We used to think that only independence would sate their hunger, that devolution was just a staging post along an inexorable road. But times and assumptions change.

Eta, the vicious face of Basque nationalism, wobbles between murderous campaigns and the brink of extinction. But the government of the Basque region has changed utterly: the Socialists and the Popular party have made their own political peace and rule, for the moment, in coalition. Nationalism of any hue has taken a step back from power. It's one of recession's tales of the wholly unexpected.

And the surprises don't stop there. Look at Edinburgh a decade on and you start to see the party of the living Thatcherite dead rise from the grave. The Tories in conference in Perth this weekend had George Osborne to ring Scottish withers, of course, as well as David Cameron himself putting the boot into the Scottish National party (SNP). But the essential voice of revival belongs to a notably successful Scottish leader, Annabel Goldie.

Labour is flailing, poll figures drooping into the mid-20s, which leaves Alex Salmond's ruling SNP near 40% and apparently on the crest of a wave. But then you check the independence question on Scotland's polls and see that support for separation is also heavily down – in the lower 20s. As the Tories edge past Scotland's becalmed Liberals, four-party politics are back north of the border, and the devolution game has become absorbingly complex. It isn't about Salmond's manoeuvrings towards a future independence vote any longer. It's about how the governance game is played out in a crunched, uncertain world.

The new Basque arrangement, in short, fits a wider pattern. In Wales, as Plaid Cymru move on to the front foot, you can see the scenery changing. In Catalonia, four parties bob and weave for advantage. From Northern Ireland, the Dublin end of the arc of prosperity looks a rickety construct: better concentrate on Westminster expenses and London flats for Sinn Féin. Scotland is also seeing the best-laid plans shredded.

Devolution was supposed to hand Labour in Scotland an eternal role in government. But watch as Brown, Darling and Co begin to see supposed eternity turning brutally finite. See how what happens next isn't as expected. Devolving power to the Basques, Scots, Welsh or Catalans creates dynamics beyond simple prophesy in an unsteady, constantly shifting state. It makes new reality in a halfway house. Weep when the ref blows his whistle, but note with surprise that politics' final whistle never blows.